05.15.08
Liberal errors and Darwinism
The Inversion of Colonial Roles
Read the rest of this entry »
05.09.08
Interesting articles on economic modelling.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/08/bankofenglandgovernor.economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_integrator
(via marxmail)
05.04.08
Gilded ages
In the Last Gilded Age, People Stood Up to Greed — Why Aren’t We?
By Steve Fraser, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 28, 2008.
Why don’t Americans rise up against the kleptocracy like they did in the late nineteenth century?
04.18.08
Shermer, Expelled, and Darwinian ideology
Even as critics of Darwinism press the issue of Darwinism and Hitler, the larger confusion created by Darwin’s theory, with its classical liberal lineage, passes into the unconscious. Here Shermer, with tactics typical of defenders, neutralizes the insight (as in his Mind of the Market) by displacing the blame backwards even as he restates the ideological fallacy as if it were normal science, or conventional wisdom.
When Stein interviewed me and asked my opinion on the impact of Darwinism on culture, he seemed astonishingly ignorant of the many other ways that Darwinism has been used and abused by political and economic ideologues of all stripes. Because Stein is a well-known economic conservative (and because I had just finished writing my book The Mind of the Market, a chapter of which compares Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” with Charles Darwin’s “natural selection”), I pointed out how the captains of industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries justified their beliefs in laissez faire capitalism through the social Darwinism of “survival of the fittest corporations.” And, more recently, I noted that Enron’s CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, said his favorite book in Harvard Business School was Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (first published in 1976), a form of Darwinism that Skilling badly misinterpreted. Scientific theorists cannot be held responsible for how their ideas are employed in the service of non-scientific agendas.
04.16.08
The Unmaking of the Market
via Common Dreams
The Unmaking of the Market
by Sally Kohn
In the most famous passage in “The Wealth of Nations”, grandfather of capitalism Adam Smith wrote:
Every individual… generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
Read the rest of this entry »
04.09.08
Fading American Economy
Government is the Largest Employer
The Fading American Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy lost 98,000 private sector jobs in March, half of which were in manufacturing. Today 13,643,000 Americans are employed in manufacturing, of which 9,849,000 are production workers.
Read the rest of this entry »
04.08.08
Kuttner: Crisis unlike any since 1933
via Znet
New President, New Crisis
The next chief executive will face an economic crisis unlike any since 1933. And either Democrat will need to break radically with the elite consensus.
Whether the next president is named Clinton, Obama, or McCain, the new chief executive will face an economic challenge unlike any since 1933. The new president will need to reject an entire failed paradigm of how the economy works and of government’s role in it.
Read the rest of this entry »
04.07.08
US vs China: Should the yankees settle for autonomy or go for independence?
Just finished reading a book I referenced a few days ago Olympics boycott: Tibet’s fate will be ours:
In the Jaws of the Dragon: America’s Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony (Hardcover)
by Eamonn Fingleton
Americans are a bit cocky, but it may be that they are incurably stupid.
I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to survive disinformation in the current media environment, for its clear depiction of the new brand of Chinese mutant Confucianist Stalinist consumerism economy, asking themselves how long they can do their Wal-mart shopping without ending up in the slave labor economy that produced it.
The Chinese, it seems, if the book is not alarmist (it will be denounced as such), have perfected a new form of something the Japanese pioneered (with at least the semblance of democracy).
Mutant is the right word, I think. Basically the issue is: how to do capitalism in a Stalinist petri dish, and have a good laugh if it brings America to its knees. Clock ticking, suspense.
There happen to be a lot of exit points here, but they have been consistently squelched each step of the way. Have we passed the point of no return? I hope not.
The book has a few problems, no doubt, but a minimum of right-wing or Buchanan type crude. He shows the demonic ingenuity of this new brand of totalitarian economy and how it works (pioneered in Manchuria by the Japanese, decades ago), and how American got sucked into it. Breathtaking cleverness, totalitarianism reinvented.
The previous post discussed the question of Tibetan autonomy versus independence, they also have this problem. Your move.
It is easy to talk about independence, but the already corrupted leadership might settle for autonomy, independence could start a world war. The elites will be well rewarded for muffled the game. Write off American freedoms as unprofitable.
Worth reading Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, a little background on the crises of ‘market’ Darwinism and world war, the last time.
04.01.08
Big finance
Destructive rise of big finance
Economic, financial and regulatory issues should dominate politics and government in the United States for the next two or three years, which is important enough. National discourse may also have a new and deserving bogeyman. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Big Business, Ronald Reagan had Big Labor, and my guess is that the new president inaugurated next January will have Big Finance.
03.29.08
The rich stand accused
The Rich Stand Accused
From Adbusters #75, JAN-FEB 2008
Photo: Ricardo Barcellos
If you want to be an ecologist, you have to stop being half-witted.” writes Hervé Kempf, author of the acclaimed Comment les riches détruisent la planète (How the Rich Destroy the Planet, Seuil, 2007). “We cannot understand the simultaneity of the ecological and social crises if we do not analyze them as two facets of the same disaster.” Read the rest of this entry »
03.28.08
Right Software for Socialism
Santiago Journal
Before ’73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: March 28, 2008
SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising discovery. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.
The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer, a visionary Briton who employed his “cybernetic” concepts to help Mr. Allende find an alternative to the planned economies of Cuba and the Soviet Union. After the coup it became the subject of intense military scrutiny.
Read the rest of this entry »
03.27.08
Socialism for the Rich!
Socialism for the Rich!
Free Market Apostates
By BINOY KAMPMARK
Read the rest of this entry »
03.23.08
Marx, Darwin, falsification
From Is Marxism Deterministic?
Popper’s falsificationism has been the object of considerable criticism, and his criticisms of Marxism are a mixture of correcting pointing to flaws and ideological bias, both. And on the subject of Darwinism, the same is true. Popper justly critiqued Darwin’s theory of natural selection on the grounds of falsifiability, despite the problems in that charge, and the fact that he (suspiciously) changed his mind. Whatever the context of that change of mind (I frankly think he back out under duress) his point is roughly speaking correct: Darwinian selectionism persists because it hasn’t been falsified, and in fact it can’t easily be falsified because observing the immense data sets required in deep time is impossible. So Popper was right the first time: for all intents and purposes Darwin’s theory is not falsifiable. In fact, over time that falsification has nearly been achieved, but there is no simple way to finalize the argument.
Meanwhile, Marxist are completely confused on the subject of Darwinism, and the attempts to compare/collate Marx and Darwin simply shows the confusions in Marxist theory which has been misled by the Darwinian illusion over natural selection.
Marxism not deterministic? Now you tell me
PHIL GASPER argues that Marx’s theory of history is vital for understanding social change, but it doesn’t claim that socialism is inevitable
While one can welcome attempts to clarify distortions of Marx the attempt to evade the determinism question is too little too late, and not really fair to the historical record which shows the dominance of ’scientific Marxism’ throughout the Second Internationale. To say that Marx has been misunderstood here requires explaining the fact that virtually the entire Marxist movement was wrong throughout. That tokens an extraordinary misunderstanding of Marx. Perhaps Marx wasn’t able to clarify his own ‘theory’. Popper and Berlin’s critiques of ‘historicism’ and ‘historical inevitability’ attempted to expose the contradiction in the thinking of the revolutionary left. Fair or not, the era Engels to Lenin was clearly in hopeless confusion as to the relationship of activism and historical laws.
03.22.08
Killer economics
Killer Economics
The Bush Plan
By MISSY COMLEY BEATTIE
According to George Bush, the Iraq war is boosting the US economy. Recently, he said to NBC’s Ann Curry, “I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs because we’re buying equipment, and people are working.”
Read the rest of this entry »
03.17.08
State Inc.
The most important new forces in global business are aggressive, wealthy, and entrepreneurial. But they aren’t corporations: they’re authoritarian governments.
03.14.08
It’s the War Economy, Stupid!
It’s the War Economy, Stupid!
With the country poised on the precipice of a recession, if not already in one, the economy has eclipsed Iraq as the most pressing issue of the moment. But rather than being treated as discrete items on a laundry list of issues, the war and the economy should be linked. While the current economic meltdown has other causes, one of the biggest obstacles we face in pulling out of this crisis is the staggering cost of the war in Iraq.
Dollar demise
Watching the Dollar Die
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
I’ve been watching the dollar die all my life. I sometimes think I will outlast it.
Read the rest of this entry »
03.12.08
Adam Smith in Beijing
China as the Antidote to Oppression and Exploitation?
Read the rest of this entry »
03.11.08
Darwin’s dangerous muddle
Darwin’s dangerous idea: Foster
The absurdities of Darwinian/economic ideology pop spontaneously from the brains of its victims. Here’s today’s dose.
Peter Foster writes in Saturday’s Financial Post that the major exhibit on Darwin that opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto this past weekend is unlikely to come away with a view that Darwinism is continuing hotbed of debate.
“Opponents of capitalism claimed — and still claim — that market competition is ‘brutally’ Darwinian, as if serving consumers by creating superior products and offering workers voluntary employment equated to the ‘law of the jungle’ … In fact, markets do represent a form of Darwinian selection, but not the natural selection of kill or be killed, but of more subtle ’sexual selection.’ Instead of males competing for ‘choosy’ females, manufacturers and service providers compete for choosy shoppers.”
03.09.08
The Leninism merry-go-round
An exchange at SciftP on Leninism…. and still another book defending Lenin (link below)
I commented several times a few weeks ago on books on Leninism and the misleading character of the literature here.
It is hopelessly naive to think that conventional Leninism is going to resurrect, as one commentator at the listserve points out, referring to its ‘rotting corpse’. Read the rest of this entry »
02.25.08
Capitalism and apocalypse
Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood
By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted February 25, 2008.
Yes, global capitalism may be resilient. But it looks like its options are increasingly limited.
The infant industry argument
by Ha-Joon Chang
Independent.co.uk (July 23 2007)
I have a six-year-old son. His name is Jin-Gyu. He lives off me, yet he
is quite capable of making a living. After all, millions of children of
his age already have jobs in poor countries.
Read the rest of this entry »
02.21.08
Let’s spare Cuba the Freidmanesque ’shock treatment’
Castro Resignation Demands Rethinking of US-Cuba Policy
Fidel Castro’s 49-year reign in Cuba ended this week with a whimper, not a bang as many Cuban Americans long hoped for, but many Cuba experts doubted.
It is not surprising that Bush is blind to the Cuban moment. But is the left any better?
The left is stuck between extremes with the Stalinist model the only option, unable to produce a model of intermediate social-democratic culture/economy that could bridge the transition for Cuba past the vulture tactics sure to lurking in the background from the Yankee capitalists who are no doubt already licking their chops for Cuba’s future.
One thing Cuba should be spared is the fraud of ’schock treatment’ that created immense suffering for no real purpose in Russia post-Gorbachev.